the human figure in early islamic art: some preliminary remarks

EVA BAER
THE HUMAN FIGURE IN EARLY ISLAMIC ART:
SOME PRELIMINARY REMARKS
The following lines are a concise summary of a larger project on the development of the human figure
in the arts of Islam from its very beginning in Syria
and Egypt to about the sixteenth century in Iran and
Central Asia. The present notes are therefore preliminary; they require further refinement and probably some elaboration of particular points not touched
upon here.
Generally speaking, paintings of the human figure
in early Islam can tentatively be divided into two main
phases. The first covers the Umayyad and early Abbasid era between the late seventh and tenth century; the second begins in the late tenth or the early
eleventh century, covers Fatimid art in Egypt, and
culminates in the late-twelfth- to mid-thirteenth-century paintings in Mesopotamia. The two periods differ stylistically and iconographically, but they also share
some common sources that are reflected not only in
the style of the figures, but also in the themes in which
they appeared.
It is common knowledge, and need not to be reiterated, that Umayyad and early Abbasid artists were
still in quest of a vocabulary that suited the requirements of Islamic society. The language they used therefore primarily reflected Sasanian and Greco-Roman
conventions. From the Sasanian tradition they inherited the frequent representations of royalty, royal
entourages, and favorite royal pastimes. They also
inherited from them the desire to demonstrate visually the continuity of their princely lineage by painting the "portraits" of their kings on the walls of their
royal residences. Indeed, Muslim historians and geographers claim to have seen wall paintings in the
form of "picture galleries" of the Sasanian kings and
Persian annals with pictures of these kings. In 915,
for example, Mas'udi claims to have seen in the house
of a notable of Istakhr a precious manuscript which
contained portraits of twenty-five Persian kings and
two queens, beginning with Ardashir and ending with
Yazdegird. These portraits, Mas'udi claims, had been
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made at the death of each monarch, and stored in
the archives of royal picture galleries. The author adds
that the Umayyad caliph Hisham (727-43) had ordered an Arabic translation made of this work. Mas'udi
does not say whether the pictures were also copied
onto the translation of the text, but he describes these
kings with all their garments and attributes, and even
mentions their poses and gestures. 1 We also learn
Fig. 1. Bas relief with Shapur II enthroned. Bishapur, 309379. In situ. (Photo: from R. Girschman, Iran, Parthiansand
Sassanians [London, 1962], p. 184)
THE HUMAN FIGURE IN EARLY ISLAMIC ART
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Fig. 3. Coin of Yazdegard III. Struck in A.D. 633. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des Medailles, no. 921. (Photo:
from R. Girschman, Iran, Parthiansand Sassanians [London,
1962], p. 251)
Fig. 2. Rock crystal medallion with effigy of Khusraw I. 6th
century or later. Paris, Bibliothhque Nationale, Cabinet des
Medailles, no. 2358. (Photo: from R. Girschman, Iran, Parthians and Sassanians [London, 1962], p. 205)
from Firdawsi that the palace of Mahmud of Ghazna
was decorated with "portraits" of the kings and heroes of Iran and Turan, and many more examples
could be cited.
So far no traces of such wall paintings or manuscripts have come to light. But princely effigies made
in Umayyad and Abbasid times after Sasanian models are preserved in official art, such as coins and
medals, as well as in other media (figs. 1-2), including floor paintings and sculpture. They all have one
thing in common, and that is that they are based on
an idealized type of Sasanian king and show no likeness to the person they are supposed to represent
(figs. 3-4).
Equally well documented are human effigies based
on Greco-Roman or late-antique models. One has only
to recall the bas relief of the reclining woman at Qasr
al-Hayr al-Gharbi; or the hunting and other scenes
of royal entertainment; or the so-called Fortuna; or
the naked woman in an aedicule on the wall paint-
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Fig. 4. Gold medal with effigy of 'Adud al-Dawlah. Tehran,
Private Collection. (Photo: from M. Bahrami, "A Gold Medal
in the Freer Gallery of Art," Archaeologia orientaliain Memoriam
Ernst Herzfeld [Locust Valley, N.Y., 1952], pl. 1, 2b)
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EVA BAER
Fig. 6. Fragment of female sculpture from Mshatta. Berlin,
Fig. 5. Female dancer. Coptic textile, ca. 7th century. Bern,
Abegg-Stiftung. (Photo: Abegg Stiftung Bern in Riggisberg [1973],
Staatliche Museen ffir Islamische Kunst, no. J 6172. (Photo:
courtesy Staatliche Museen fr Islamische Kunst, Berlin)
p. 4)
ings at Qusayr 'Amra.3 Both the Fortuna and the
woman in the aedicule recall Faiyum or Antinoe portraits, which in style, costume, and facial shape are
Roman, and supposedly were copied by Romans living in the Egyptian hinterland. By the same token
the female dancers at Qusayr 'Amra reflect dancing
women on Coptic textiles (fig. 5) which, like the
painted or carved dancers in Fatimid Egypt, were
designed in Egypto-Roman style. 4
The artistic traditions behind these works of artbe they late Roman or Sasanian-must also have appealed to the taste of early Islamic society. This is
particularly evident if we compare pre-Islamic with
eighth-century early Islamic representations of the
female body which, following a common ideal canon
of beauty, had to be voluptuous, with full breasts, fleshy
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buttocks, and sloping hips. Take, for instance, the
late Roman figure of Artemis in a mid-third-century
mosaic emblem from Shahba-Philippopolis, or the
representation of Aphrodite in another mosaic from
the same site, but dated about a century later. In both
mosaics the concentrically placed tesserae clearly
accentuate the bosom and belly, as well as the fat
hip and thigh of these goddesses. 5 By the same token, some of the Sasanian nudes or semi-nudes, like
the harpist in the mosaics of Bishapur, or a female
dancer on one of the boat-shaped silver bowls, reveal similar characteristics. 6 In concept they, too, are
closely related to the fragmentary stone sculptures
of Mshatta (now in Berlin and Amman) (fig. 6), or
lo the female stucco sculptures at Khirbat al-Mafjar. 7
Whether the latter follow Central Asian or Indian
prototypes, as has sometimes been argued, is not rel-
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THE HUMAN FIGURE IN EARLY ISLAMIC ART
Fig. 7. Fatimid luster plate with cock fight. 11th century. Keir Collection no. 88. (Photo: from B. W. Robinson, ed., Islamic
Painting and the Arts of the Book [London, 1976]).
evant here, and in any case is questionable. Their
importance lies in the fact that they responded to
the idea of female beauty in the new Islamic society,
and reflected the taste of the patron who commissioned them.
In the first phase, roughly outlined above, the
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images were related in one way or another to the
ruler, and showed either his effigy, his entourage and
members of his harem, or various aspects of royal
pastimes. In the second phase, beginning towards the
end of the tenth century, the range of human imagery widened. Although the preference for princely
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EVA BAER
Fig. 8. Fatimid luster dish with wrestling scene. Cairo, Museum of Islamic Art, no. 9689. (Photo: from Richard Ettinghausen,
Arabic Painting [New York, 1962], pp. 55, 82)
imagery remained, Fatimid artists, followed by Mesopotamian painters in the later twelfth and thirteenth
century, also included people from the lower social
orders in their repertoire. This change, which some
scholars have connected to the rising bourgeoisie but
which has never been studied in depth, brought about
a new attitude towards the human figure, which, as
we shall see below, occasionally even led to caricature.
Early evidence for this new attitude is provided by
some Fatimid ceramics, which depict scenes of popular entertainment, like the cock fight (fig. 7) depicted on an eleventh-century luster-painted bowl in
the Keir Collection (no. 88). The two performers,
apparently a man and an eunuch with a fattish, effeminate face, hold the cocks in preparation for the
fight, and seem to examine each other with looks so
hostile that it appears to be they, and not the cocks,
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who are the rivals. Or take the two men in a mock
fight with staves (Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo, no.
14516), or the wrestlers (fig. 8) who, accompanied
by a trainer and what seems to be an audience, are
full of movement and action expressing physical strain
and individuality-traits totally missing from the images of princely or royal status. 8 This new trend in
Fatimid Egypt is given its final expression in early- to
mid-thirteenth-century paintings in Mesopotamia. The
most obvious examples come from the so-called
Schefer Hariri (dated 634 [1237]). Take, for instance,
the sleeping travelers in the miniature of a caravan
at rest, in Paris, BN 5847 (fol. 9: fig. 9), whose completely relaxed poses and closed eyes are so realistic
that they appear to be the result of the artist's actual
observation of tired men having a good night's rest.
The groom, who sits next to the camels, even has
caricature-like features. Another example of this new
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THE HUMAN FIGURE IN EARLY ISLAMIC ART
Fig. 9. Resting caravan. Hariri, Maqamat. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, ms. ar. 5847, fol. 9. (Photo: from Oleg Grabar,
"Art and Architecture," in The Genius of Arab Civilization [Oxford, 1976], p. 93)
approach are the mourners in the funerary scene,
also in Paris, BN 5847 (fol. 29v; fig. 10), who express
their grief by rending their garments, gesticulating
wildly with their hands, raising their eyebrows, or
tearing their unkempt hair.
These and numerous other examples, which attest
to the changing attitude towards the human figure,
are also reflected in contemporary writings. A typical
instance is an anecdote mentioned by Richard Ettinghausen, according to which a humble Iraqi glassblower
threatened the poet Bashshar ibn Burd, known for
his ugliness, that if he, the poet, would write a satiric
poem against him, he, the glassblower, would paint
his face on the door of his house. 9 Had the glassblower painted the face of the poet on the door, it
presumably would have been a "mock portrait" or a
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caricature like the drawing of Bashshar's ugly face.
Such an assumption seems reasonable in view of satiric or mocking pictures on Fatimid lusterware. Take,
for instance, the satirical "portrait" of a fat, mustached,
and double-chinned monk on a fragmentary bowl that
originally depicted a scene from the life of the Copts
in Egypt.' It is a caricature of the Christian monk,
as are the funny faces and grimaces on other Fatimid fragments."
A typical example of a satiric or mocking picture
in Mesopotamia is a miniature from a dispersed manuscript of the -MateriaMedica, copied in Rajab 621 (JuneJuly 1224). Once owned by Vever and now in the
Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C. (S 86.0097), it shows
a blindfolded man (fig. 11) being ministered to by a
half-naked person with a big belly. The miniature,
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EVA BAER
Fig. 10. Funerary scene. Hariri, Maqdmat. Paris, Bibliotheque
Nationale, ms. ar. 5847, fol. 29v. (Photo: from Oleg Grabar,
"Art and Architecture," in The Genius of Arab Civilization
[Oxford, 1976], p. 30)
Fig. 11. Medieval treatment of blindfolded man. Single leaf
from the Materia Medica of Dioscorides. Washington, D.C.,
Sackler Gallery, S 86.0097. (Photo: from Glenn Lowry and
Susan Nemazee, A Jeweler's Eye [Washington, D.C., 1988], p.
70)
which is not directly related to the text, appears to
be a parody of a medical treatment, and the halfnaked person seems to be mocking a real one. Curiously enough the man resembles al-Jahiz's description of a certain Ahmad ibn al-Wahab, who in the
Kitab al-tarbt wa'l tadwr 12 is said to be quadrangular,
although because of his enormous paunch and wide
hips he appears to be round.
We also have contemporary Iranian evidence for
the trend toward painting men and women more
realistically. For instance, in an anecdote included
in the Chaharmaqala, Nizami Aruzi Samarkandi talks
about the use of portraiture in warrants. According
to the story, the Khwarazm shah, in order to find
Ibn Sina, asked a painter by the name of Abu Nasr-i
'Arraq to draw his portrait. He then asked other artists to make forty copies of this portrait, which he
then sent to all the neighboring rulers, saying: "There
is a man after this likeness whom they call Abu 'Ali
ibn Sina. Seek him out and send him to me."' 3 Other
evidence is provided by Nizami Ganjawi, who in his
Khusraw and Shirin romance makes the painter named
Shapur declare that the people he draws move and
the birds he paints fly. Elsewhere, however, Nizami
maintains that since men can only be created by God,
the painted image has no soul, and has no more
corporeal substance than the reflections in a mirror.1 4
Be that as it may, between the second half of the
THE HUMAN FIGURE IN EARLY ISLAMIC ART
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Fig. 12. The so-called devil dancer. Persian silhouette ware,
late 12th century. London, British Museum, no. 1956-7-28.5.
(Photo: from Arthur Lane, Early Islamic Pottery [London,
1947], pl. 49)
twelfth and the mid thirteenth centuries Iranian painters too "portrayed"-as it were-grotesque figures like
jongleurs, popular dancers, and scoundrels, which in
fact look as if they were modeled after shadow-play
figures. They generally appear as a silhouette on latetwelfth-century Persian ceramics, painted in black slip
under turquoise or clear glaze. Typical examples are
the so-called devil dancer in the British Museum
(1956-7-28.5) (fig. 12), and the male dancer in the
Victoria and Albert Museum (fig. 13), 15 where the
painter has especially stressed the man's spike-like
hair. On another dish of this type a figure, seated
with crossed legs and raised arms, has a disproportionately long nose, elaborately curled hair, and an
extremely small forehead. 16 It is presumably not incidental that similar silhouette figures occur in contemporary Mesopotamian manuscripts, which probably were also copied from, or at least were inspired
by, shadow-play figures. Ettinghausen, who was the
first to note these resemblances, pointed, among other
examples, to the picture of Abu Zayd leaving al-Harith
during the pilgrimage (Maqimdat, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, ms. ar. 3929, fol. 69r), and remarked
that "even the little plant in the centre [of the scene]
looks like a piece of stage property" (fig. 14). 17
Another example of the relation between shadow-play figures and miniature painting is the halfnaked, comic person in a detached page from the
Ca
Fig. 13. Male dancer with castanets. Persian silhouette ware.
London, Victoria and Albert Museum. (Photo: from Arthur
Lane, Early Islamic Pottery [London, 1947], pl. 51a)
dispersed Materia Medica (fig. 11) already mentioned.
His elbows and knees are curiously marked by small
disks, as if imitating the joints of puppet figures, allowing them to move, raise their arms and feet, and
even walk. Recently Shmuel Moreh has shown that
by the end of the tenth or early eleventh century Ibn
al-Haytham (ca. 965) in his Kitab al-mandzir systematically discussed the technical details of the shadow
puppets: "There are holes pierced in the bodies of
the shadow play figures, so that they can be held
against the screen with a stick.... The presenter
holds another stick in his other hand and with this
he moves their heads, arms and legs." He then continues that the "light of a candle or lamp placed behind them casts coloured shadows of the translucent
figures on the white screen."' 8 Although Ibn al-Haytham was born in Basra, he spent most of his life in
Egypt, where he must have seen shadow-play performances and studied their techniques. He does not
say where these performances took place, but they
were obviously part of the popular entertainments
which were also enjoyed by members of the upper
class like Salah al-Din.' 9 It appears, therefore, that
shadow plays and shadow playwrights like Muhammad ibn Daniyal (1248-1311) existed much earlier
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EVA BAER
Fig. 14. Abu Zayd leaving al-Harith. Hariri, Maqamat. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, ms. ar. 3929, fol. 69r. (Photo: from
Richard Ettinghausen, Arabic Painting [New York, 1962], p. 82)
than scholars had thought. They may well have inspired Fatimid artists to include in their repertoire
scenes from everyday life and popular entertainment
and to feel free to depict them in a more realistic
style.
To conclude: Throughout the first Islamic period,
which roughly covers the seventh to mid tenth centuries, Muslim artists still in quest of their own vocabulary adopted foreign, Sasanian, and Greco-Roman
models and adapted them for their own purposes.
They decorated their rooms with pictures taken from
late-antique traditions, such as hunting and other
scenes of royal pastimes and depicted female dancers and musicians, which at the same time indicate a
continuity of norms Muslim society had inherited from
preceding Mediterranean civilizations. To judge by
written descriptions, they also reflect common ideas
about women and similar concepts of ideal female
beauty. Another motivating factor in official art
was the desire to demonstrate visually the succession of caliphal power by continuing the Sasanian
tradition of "picture galleries," for which written
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evidence exists up to at least the Ghaznavid period.
In the second phase, beginning in the late tenth
to early eleventh century, the artistic vocabulary began to change. On the one hand, the impact of Sasanian and Greco-Roman art was retained; on the other, Islamic artists developed a more "realistic" style,
remnants of which appear on Fatimid ceramics. This
new style culminated, or found its full expression, in
twelfth- to mid-thirteenth-century Mesopotamian book
illustrations.
The reason-or perhaps reasons-for this change
still needs proper explanation, which requires the
cooperation of students from other historical disciplines. For example, who were the artists in the
Umayyad and early Abbasid period? Were they local
residents, or Muslims who copied pre-Islamic models often without understanding their meaning? And
what was the relation between patron and artist? Second, the main medium on which lower-class people
appear are Fatimid luster ceramics. The technique
of lusterware suggests, however, that these ceramics
were ordered by members of the upper class who could
afford the greater expense involved. Third, in view
THE HUMAN FIGURE IN EARLY ISLAMIC ART
of these questions, the problem of the rising bourgeoisie in Fatimid Egypt and thirteenth-century Mesopotamia must be reexamined.
8.
9.
10.
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv, Israel
11.
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
'Ali ibn al-Husayn al-Mas'udi, Kitdb al-tanbih wa'l ashrdf
(Leiden, 1893), pp. 106,5-107,5; trans. Carra de Vaux, El-Macoudi, Le livre de l'avertissement (Paris, 1896), pp. 150-51. See
also "Extraits du modjmel al-tewarikh relatifs a l'histoire de
la Perse," trans. Jules Mohl, Journal Asiatique, March 1841,
Arabic text, pp. 268-78; trans. pp. 258-68.
Many examples can be found in Katharina Otto-Dorn, "Das
islamische Herrscherbild im frihen Mittelalter (8.-11.Jh),"
in Das Bild in der Kunst des Ostens (Stuttgart, 1990), pp. 6178.
Inv. no.J. 1264. For a facsimile, see A. Musil, Kusejr 'Amra,
2 vols. (Vienna, 1907), vol. 2, pl. XXIII; cf. 1: 206.
For color reproductions of Fortuna and the dancer at Qusayr
'Amra, see M. Almagro et al., Qusayr 'Amra (Madrid, 1975),
pl. IXb and XXVIIc.
Janine Balty, Mosaiques antiquesde Syrie (Brussels, 1977), pp.
20-21; for Aphrodite, see ibid., pp. 58-59; also figure of
Cassiopea, p. 33.
R. Ghirshman, Iran, Parthiansand Sassanians (London, 1962),
figs. 182 and 258.
For the Mshatta fragments, see L. Trumpelmann, "Die Skulpturen von Mashatta," Archdologischer Anzeiger 2 (1965): 23676, figs. 1-6, 9-12; on the whole problem concerning the
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12.
13.
14.
15.
16
17.
18.
19.
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canon of beauty in early Islam, see Eva Baer, "Female Images in Early Islam" (in press).
See Richard Ettinghausen, Arab Painting (New York, 1962),
pp. 55-56.
Ibid., p. 54.
Berlin, Museum fr Islamische Kunst, Katalog (Berlin, 1971),
no. 275 and pl. 47.
See H. Philon, Early Islamic Ceramics [9th to 12th Centuries],
(Athens, 1980), figs. 487, 489. See also Ali Bey Bahgat and
Felix Massoul, La Cramique musulmane de l'tgypte (Cairo,
1930), pl. XXXII,6, which shows the profile of a bearded
man with a carrot-shaped nose and open mouth.
Ahmad ibn al-Wahab, Kitab al-tarbiwa'l tadwTr, ed. Ch. Pellat
(Damascus, 1955), p. 5.
Nizami-i 'Arudi of Samarqand, Chahar maqdla, rev. trans.
Edward G. Browne (London, 1900), p. 87, anecdote XXXVI;
Persian text edited by Mirza Muhammad, E. J. W. Gibb
Memorial vol. 11, 2 (London, 1921): 77-78. See also Sir Th.
Arnold, Paintingin Islam (New York, 1965), p. 127, who notes
that since the reign of Mahmud of Ghazna portraiture must
have been used for purposes of detection.
Priscilla Soucek, "Nizami on Painters and Painting," in Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum ofArt, ed. Richard Ettinghausen (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1972), pp.
17-18.
Reproduced in Arthur Lane, Early Islamic Pottery (London,
1947), pls. 49A and 51A.
Arthur Upham Pope, A Survey of Persian Art (Tokyo, 1971),
vol. 10, pl. 750d.
Ettinghausen, Arab Painting, pp. 82-83.
Shmuel Moreh, "The Shadow Play (khayal al-zill) in the Light
of Arabic Literature," inJournalof Arabic Literature 18 (1987):
47.
Ibid., p. 48.